The View from the Hermitage, Day 141

As if life were not interesting enough these days, Mother Nature (that bitch!) has decided to throw a tropical storm or hurricane into the mix. Right now, we're sitting in the middle of a yellow area on the rainfall map put out by the National Hurricane Center. Yellow denotes 4 to 6 inches of rain. The rain and its partner the wind should arrive overnight tonight and could hang out all day tomorrow. Our--the husband and I--big worry is trees or large branches coming down and hitting, well, anything that should not be hit. Southern pines do not have a wide root system, meaning that if the soil gets wet enough and the wind gets strong enough, they can just fall over. There are several in positions relative to the house that set them up to do some damage. As I typed those words, the thought occurred to me that we just had the inside of the house repainted and all the hardwood floors refinished. Sounds as if the stage is set for a tree through the roof. I hope I have not just jinxed ourselves.

On the pandemic front, the White House coronavirus advisor, Dr. Birx, yesterday noted that the virus is now pretty much everywhere--urban areas, rural areas, everywhere. She also noted that she, unlike HWSNBN and the CDC, would not support schools opening for in-person instruction. How did HWSNBN take this news? Not at all well. I believe the word he used to describe her words and possibly her as a person was "pathetic." Older son saw a report that suggested one in 70 Americans had suffered from covid-19, symptomatically or not. That means we all should know one or more person(s) who have it or have had it. I know one person, and if we want to play degrees of Kevin Bacon, I'm two degrees from two other people. Of those three, two survived.

Thinking as I just was of having acquaintances who have had covid-19, I think again of the number of asymptomatic cases. How many more people do each of us know who had it and never knew they had it? Not knowing they had it, they had no way of knowing they were passing it on to other people. That is one of the things I find most frightening about this novel coronavirus. The other would be the degree of damage of unknown duration that it can do to so many different bodily systems. Lungs, heart, kidneys, brain: every day we seem to be learning of some other way in which the virus can ravage our bodies. In the moments in which I feel that I am over-reacting huddled as I am in the hermitage, I remind myself that I might be reacting differently were I to have just one of the avenues of vulnerability rather than three (four, if you want to count my age).

Possibly because of feeling somewhat inferior to others who apparently have no fear of the coronavirus, I have had a strange reaction to the televised advertising for various online universities: Southern New Hampshire, Phoenix, WGU, and the like. The ads all show people striving to achieve, dedicated, serious, aiming for a goal they have set. When one of those ads came on the other night, I told the husband that it made me feel unmotivated, as if I should be trying to achieve something. I never was one of those work colleagues with a ten-year career plan. I've fooled a lot of people into thinking I can plan or organize or lay out a way to accomplish something when I feel that I'm just winging it, being more reactive than proactive. I should probably try to utilize better the extra time to think that the pandemic isolation offers and work on some self-esteem issues.

Another topic I have found myself pondering during that thinking time was the non-personal casualties of the pandemic. It's more of a male thing, but I'm not sure shaking hands will ever return, at least not in many cultures. Then there are the pecks on each cheek that I never really understood during the year we lived in Europe. Which cheek first? Exactly what do those pecks convey? And perhaps the one I will miss the most--the hug. Holding someone tight to say without words how just much they mean to us. I don't mean the casual hug, the kind a man might do as he gives you the perfunctory male peck on one cheek. (This may be a society-type thing given that the only person who has done this to me was an upper class type who I think mistakenly thought I was as upper class as he.) A woman with whom I used to work out asked online if there were a place she could get a rapid covid-19 test or the regular test with extremely short turn-around time on the results. Her father had died, and she wanted to know that she could safely hug her mother when she got home for the funeral. That's the sort of hug I think we don't want to lose. The one that says we care.